So she was aware of the shoulder touching too. “I don’t think everybody noticed it. That’s just not true.”
“And you hardly said good night to him. That’s not very nice, considering he was the host and took us all out to dinner—in my honor.”
“But I did say good night to him.” Carter remembered, though, that he hadn’t thanked him.
“I think you’re behaving rather childishly.”
Carter stood up, suddenly angry. “I don’t think you’re behaving like a wife.”
“Just what are you talking about?” Hazel sat up.
“I’d just like to know one thing,” Carter said quickly. “Did you have an affair with him while I was in prison?”
“No!— Shut the door. I don’t want Timmy to hear this charming conversation.”
Carter pushed the door shut. “I think you did, that’s why I ask.”
“Ridiculous,” she said, but he saw her waver and give ground.
“I can tell it!”
She gave a long, shuddering sigh. Then she reached for a cigarette. Her hand was shaking as she held her lighter to it. “I think it may help,” she said, not looking at him, “if I tell you I did have an affair with him. It lasted all of three weeks. Or rather two weeks and four days to be perfectly exact.”
Carter felt breathless now. “When?”
“Four years ago. More than that. It was a few weeks after the second rejection, the Supreme Court second rejection.” Now she looked at him. “I was very unhappy then. I didn’t know what I should do with my life—or what would become of yours. I loved David in a way, yes. But the affair didn’t help and I felt worse. I felt ashamed of myself and I broke it off. I couldn’t even see David—for about a month afterward.”
He was still barely breathing, standing motionless. “Now at least I know.”
“Yes, you know. You know that I’m sorry about it. You know that it can’t happen again.”
“Why can’t it? Why do you say that?”
“If you think it can, then you don’t understand. You don’t understand me.”
“I’m beginning to,” he said. “Why can’t it?”
She didn’t answer, only looked at him.
“You say you loved him. Do you still love him?”
“Aren’t I here with you?”
“Yes, but if I weren’t here, weren’t in the picture?”
“Oh, Phil—”
“I asked you a question. If I weren’t here.”
“Since you ask, yes. If you weren’t here—if you died in prison, for instance, the way your friend did, then yes, I’d undoubtedly have married David. Timmy likes him, too. He’s easy to be with, easier than you’re becoming lately.”
Carter tore off his pajama top. He went to the closet, winced for an instant as his eyes fell on the costume party photograph, which he felt like tearing up, then jerked the cord of his pajama pants.
“Where are you going?” Her voice was alarmed.
“Out for a walk.”
“At four in the morning?— Phil, you’re not going to do something crazy like go to see David, are you?”
“I’m going out for a walk, Hazel, I have to.” He was dressed in a flash, doubling his shirt over and not bothering to button it. He walked out of the bedroom, left the door open, and got his overcoat from the front closet by feeling for it in the dark. Then he opened the front door and went out, started to close it, then opened it on an impulse and listened. It was like part of the bad dream coming true, the clicking of the telephone dial as Hazel dialed Sullivan’s number on the bedroom extension. To warn him? To have a comforting chat? Carter might have stood there in the dark and perhaps heard what she said, something of what she said, but he could guess it, anyway. He closed the door and went down the steps. There was nothing to do on such a night but walk.
He walked until the dawn came up, and it did him a great deal of good, the walk and watching the dawn. He would say to Hazel, “I’m glad you told me, and we don’t have to mention it again, as far as I’m concerned.” Or something like that. Or maybe it was better to make no speeches at all.
16
A couple of mornings later, Carter found a letter from Gawill in the box downstairs. Somehow he knew it was from Gawill before he opened it. It was a small white business envelope with no return address, the handwriting tall and thin and a little wobbly. Then Carter noticed the Queens postmark, barely legible. Carter was on his way out to buy a couple of things Hazel had forgotten on her shopping list, but he climbed the stairs again to read Gawill’s letter in the apartment. It said:
Dear Phil,
I feel like finishing what I started to tell you. I had my men watching Sullivan’s apartment and the apartment he had before that on 53rd Street. I guess you know about 53rd Street when your wife was plainly living with him. I’m talking about the four years after that. Even your son ought to know about it, because kids aren’t so dumb. I had the feeling you didn’t believe me the other day about any of this, and considering what I’ve put up with from Sullivan that’s annoying. Maybe you don’t know that your wife went twice (maybe more, I mean we saw her twice) to Sullivan’s apartment in the last month? Do you think I’d be putting this all down on paper if it wasn’t true? Did your wife tell you she saw Sullivan twice in the last month by herself? I bet she didn’t. Is he still stringing her along, saying he’ll get a job for you or something like that for a little attention she might give him? Probably. That’s like Sullivan. It’s still going on, Phil. Wake up. Proof you want, I guess. Okay. I’ve got the notes of my boys and I’ve got a tape record of conversations Sullivan had with your wife—I wasn’t after those but they came in. They happened about six months ago, some later. You are welcome to hear them when you want. I can also have one of the boys snap her picture going in his house any time now if you want it.
I don’t like anybody to think I’m a liar. Address at top of paper in case you want to get in touch with me. All the best,
Greg
“One of the boys,” as if Gawill had a paid staff. Gawill had delusions of grandeur. He glanced at the multinumbered, Jackson Heights address again, plus the telephone number, then he tore the letter up and stuck it in the garbage pail among the breakfast orange rinds.
David Sullivan telephoned that afternoon around 3 and said that his friend Butterworth was back in New York, and that Carter ought to call him for an appointment.
“There’s something else I want to talk to you about, Phil. Are you free today around six?”
“Sure, David. Want to come over here?”
“I’d rather talk to you alone. Would you mind coming to my place?”
Carter said he would come. He felt uneasy after he had hung up. Was this going to be another confession? A confession perhaps of a four-year affair? He forced himself to go briskly to the telephone directory—which Hazel preferred to keep on the floor of the hall closet, because she thought it unsightly in the living room—look up the number of Jenkins and Field, Inc., and call Mr. Butterworth.
Mr. Butterworth sounded very friendly, and they made an appointment for Friday at 10 o’clock.
Hazel usually got home just before 6, and Carter told Timmy to tell her that he was going to David’s and ought to be back a little after 7.
“Mommy’s not going?” Timmy asked.
“No. David just wants to talk to me about something. A job, I think. Tell Mommy that.”
“Can I go?”
Carter turned at the door. The boy’s eagerness hurt him. Timmy was very fond of Sullivan. “Why, Timmy? It’s not going to be any fun—just talking business.”
“Well, if it’s just for an hour,” Timmy said, still pleading.
“No, Timmy. Sorry. It’s business, and I’ve got to take off now or I’ll be late.”
Carte
r took a taxi to Sullivan’s house. He rang the bell marked Sullivan, and went in when David pressed the release button. Sullivan was on the third floor and he had the floor-through. As in his and Hazel’s house, there were only three other apartments in the building.
Sullivan greeted him at the door, took his coat, and asked if he would like a drink.
“I suppose. Thanks. Not too strong.”
Sullivan went to the bar cart in a corner of his living room.
Carter waited, watching him.
“I had a phone call from Gawill,” Sullivan said, handing Carter his drink. He also had a drink for himself. “A very nasty phone call. He said he’d had a talk with you.” Sullivan looked at him. Tenseness made his narrow face look thinner. He was also pale.
“Yes. It was a nasty little talk we had, too.”
“He told me about it. Listen, Phil—” Then he stopped, and stared into the fireless fireplace as if he were trying to gather up his thoughts or his courage. “Hazel called me—late Monday night. Her birthday. She was pretty upset. She said she told you—about us.” Sullivan turned and looked at Carter.
“Yes, she did.”
“She told you the truth. I’m sorry, Phil—”
“Oh, it’s over, it’s over,” Carter said impatiently. “I think Hazel can weather it. Or all of us.”
“I’m sure you can,” Sullivan said solemnly. “But I understand Gawill told you something else. Something that’s not true. Something about its lasting four years.”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t true.”
Carter only looked at him, but Sullivan was waiting for him to say something, to say he believed him. “Well, I didn’t tell Hazel I saw Gawill.”
“I know. She—” Sullivan stopped.
She would have told me, Carter knew Sullivan had started to say. Carter took a big gulp of his drink. Then he tried to control his anger. Sullivan might not be the picture of virtue, but Gawill was a lot worse. “I didn’t believe Gawill,” Carter said.
“Good.” Sullivan’s shoulders relaxed visibly. “It’s a hell of a nasty story and it’s insulting to Hazel.” He stood a little taller, as if he were Hazel’s champion.
Was four years so much nastier than three weeks, Carter wondered? He supposed so.
“You’re taking all this very well, Phil,” Sullivan said.
Was he? Carter shrugged. “I love Hazel. And anyway—I suppose this isn’t the Victorian Age anymore, is it?” As soon as he said it, he felt it was.
“There’s nothing Gawill won’t stoop to. I don’t think this is the end by any means. Especially if he sees it doesn’t get results.”
“What do you mean by results?”
“Gawill hates my guts, as I’ve told you. He’d love you to beat me up—or worse. He’d love you to make a big stink and drag my name around—you know, in the firm where I work. You may think stories like this can’t hurt a professional man today, but they can.”
Carter saw that Sullivan was mainly concerned about himself, his career. It seemed contemptible. “Well, I’m not going to do that,” Carter said. “Gawill himself might, I suppose.”
“Yes, he might. I don’t know what he’s waiting for. Well, he was waiting to see you, of course. Do you know what he told me?” Sullivan said with a short laugh. “He told me you were blind mad when he told you about—told you that it had gone on for four years. Said you threatened to kill me.”
Carter watched him carefully.
“I’m beginning to think I’d better hire a bodyguard.”
Sullivan said it as if he meant it. Carter realized that he was not much interested in the subject, in Sullivan’s physical safety. He realized something more, that he wished Sullivan were out of the picture. In a prison, Carter thought, in the jungle law of a prison, if a man knew that another inmate had slept with his wife, that inmate might be found mysteriously dead in a corridor one day.
“Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t believe me?” Sullivan asked.
“Well, yes, I suppose I do.”
“You see, Phil, you’ve got an interest in this, too. Gawill would love to get one of his tough boys to kill me—and somehow pin it on you. I’ve said that before. Look at what he’s doing now, trying to work you up to it. You see that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I see that.”
Then there was a silence, while Sullivan frowned and strolled around the room, as if he were going to say something else. Carter sat down. He felt somehow quite secure. It amused him to see Sullivan anxious about his life. It was something new to Sullivan. It would not have been new to Carter. “Did you hear from Gawill today, by any chance?”
“No. Why? Did you?”
“No,” Carter said calmly, and flicked his cigarette ash into a tray.
Sullivan was staring at him, as if he were afraid to ask any more questions. Obviously, Sullivan was afraid Gawill had said something more to him. And Carter thought it very likely that Gawill had called up Sullivan today or yesterday and told him that he had sent an informative letter to Philip Carter.
“All this mess stirred up,” Sullivan said, “because I was trying to—” He shook his head. “I might as well not even have tried. It didn’t give me all that satisfaction just to take Gawill down a few rungs. That’s all I did.”
Sullivan was trying to say his life was in danger, because he had been trying to get him out of prison. But why keep repeating it, if it were true? And Sullivan’s activities hadn’t shortened Carter’s sentence by a single day.
“I don’t expect to have any more conversations with Gawill,” Carter said, getting up.
Sullivan asked him about Butterworth, and asked him to give him a ring after the interview on Friday and tell him how things went. Then Carter left.
Carter told Hazel that Sullivan had wanted to brief him for the Butterworth interview.
“You’re looking more cheerful tonight,” Hazel said. “I hope it goes like a dream on Friday.”
“A dream,” Carter repeated. He was standing in the kitchen, watching her pour meringue on top of a lemon pie. She wore an apron, a tweed skirt, a short-sleeved white blouse, and her hair was tied back with a thin black ribbon, and a few hairs had slipped out at one side. Carter remembered watching her in their kitchen in New York years ago, then in Fremont, now here. He frowned. His vision now was a little sullied, because he knew she had been with Sullivan. It wasn’t his moral sense that was disturbed, Carter thought, just his image of Hazel as some dazzling goddess, invincibly strong, who could do no evil. He could weather it, just as he had said to Sullivan. No whining, no Victoriana. It was a blotch, but so had prison been a blotch—a long one, not to mention the Whitey incident in the raid. He bore scars from prison. Now Hazel bore this.
Her brows went up a little, questioningly, as she looked at him, then she turned away to do something else. In the past weeks, she had asked him a few times, “What’s the matter, darling?” or “What are you thinking?” but he had not always been able to tell her, or hadn’t wanted to. It was not always that he was thinking something definite, Carter knew, when the odd expression came on his face. His face had simply changed in six years, and Hazel wasn’t used to it. But once he knew he had troubled her by answering, “I’m thinking the whole world is like one big prison, and prisons are just an exaggerated form of it.” And then, try as he had that night, he hadn’t been able to make clear to her what he meant. There were rules and regulations in the nonprison world, too, he had meant, and at times they did not seem to make sense, except as products of fear, made to assuage fear. Sometimes he felt they held together an even madder world than prison that lay just underneath, in everybody’s mind. Without the rest of the world to tell a man when to sleep and eat, when to work and stop, without everybody else who was doing these things to imitate, an individual might go in
sane. That evening he had believed it because he felt it, and even still he partly believed it, but Hazel had not, and the more he tried to be clear about it, the fuzzier the idea sounded.
“Darling, don’t forget the Elliotts this weekend.”
“No.” He vaguely remembered. They were going to Long Island Friday evening after Hazel got off from work. Roger Elliott was an investment counselor, and Hazel had given him most of their money, which was very well placed now in blue-chip securities. Priscilla Elliott, who was about thirty, stayed at home and took care of the two children, both younger than Timmy, and painted portraits and landscapes as a hobby, competently but dully. Their house was huge and extremely permanent looking on its broad green lawn. Sullivan was not coming this weekend to the Elliotts’, Carter remembered. That was one good thing about it.
The next day was Thursday, and Carter had nothing in particular to do. He supervised the cleaning girl, Sandra, who came on Thursdays from 1 to 4, more carefully than usual, thinking Hazel would be pleased that he remembered to tell Sandra to wipe the kitchen shelves and clean the medicine cabinet shelves. Sandra never paid full attention to Hazel’s notes.
The telephone rang just before 3, and it was Gawill. He said, “Hi, Phil. Well, I guess you got my letter.”
“Yes.”
“I thought it deserved an answer, don’t you?— A telephone call or an answer?”
“Did it?”
“Come on, Phil. Are you afraid to hear the tapes?”
Carter felt suddenly angry. “I am not afraid to hear your tapes or any tapes—” He left it dangling, not wanting to say “about Hazel” or to say her name to Gawill.
“All right, when’re you coming over? Tonight?”
“I’m not free tonight. How soon are you home from work?”
“Around six.”
“I’ll be there. Wait—the address.” Carter took it down.
Listen to the tapes or whatever Gawill had, and get it over with, he thought. Gawill probably had nothing.